In article ,
Monique Reed wrote:
Coconut fruits are drupes, with the outer layers of the husk
representing the exocarp and mesocarp. The "shell" of the de-husked
coconut that one buys in the store is the endocarp, with the seed
inside. Botanical trivia: Coconut endosperm starts out as a
liquid--lots of nuclei, no cell walls--and gradually solidifies into
the white "meat." There's a little embryo in there that will emerge
from one of the "eyes" in the endocarp.

G'day Monique,

Thank you for the response. One further query:

In my experience with coconuts, the fully grown but still immature
fruit have the best juice for drinking, and the "flesh" or "meat" is
rather gelatinous.

Freshly fallen mature fruit also have quite acceptable juice for
drinking, but the "flesh" [endosperm] is by this time quite hard and
almost brittle.

Do you have any idea what changes have occurred in the juice in this
process of maturation? Clearly, not all of it solidifies.


Plant scientists studying growth regulators and embryo development
tried squirting hundreds and hundreds of things into their cell
cultures. On a whim, someone tried coconut milk. Pow! Results.
Since then, several hundred cytokinin derivatives have been isolated
from coconut milk. See:
http://www.biologie.uni-hamburg.de/b-online/e31/31c.htm

Monique Reed
in cold and wet Texas A&M

So what *is* the seed in the coconut fruit? Just the embryo?

Cheers, Phred.

--
LID